


In Perpetuum

by mediocrityatbest



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Multi, and there is rumor mongering abounding, but I swear this really is supposed to be a nice little love story, death is sort of mentioned, romantic DLAMP - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 18:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21150017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocrityatbest/pseuds/mediocrityatbest
Summary: This is for Sanders Sides Spooky Month hosted by @sanderssidescelebrations on Tumblr.Day Five Prompt: Ghost storyIt IS a ghost story!! I swear!! At least...that's how it started out. And it still is! It is just also a ghost-love-story now! This does not cancel out the ghostliness of it.They say the house is haunted. Shadows where there can't be, sounds there shouldn't be, music when nobody's lived there for over a decade. They say there was a murder there. But what really happened?





	In Perpetuum

They say that you can still hear his voice.

They say shades of purple and black move along walls when the sun goes down. They say stomping footsteps still go up and down the steps. They say shadows dance in windows when there is no light to cast them. They say the warnings are true. They say murder happened there, violently, and his spirit wants revenge. They say he waits for someone he once loved and mourns forever.

They say a lot of things. But the only way to parse the truth from decades of misinformation and rumors is to have been there.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx  1950s xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The man is wearing a skirt. Maybe that doesn’t strike you as odd, but it is. (Later, this would come to be a dress and make-up and heels, but he doesn’t know that yet.) The man is also wearing boots from a war zone he prefers not to remember. The man is, in fact, a soldier returned home from the Second World War just years prior. He is anxious, and he struggles, but he is lucky and mostly happy. (Later, this too would be distorted to extreme PTSD and anger and insanity, but that’s as far from the truth as you could feasibly be.) The man is sitting in the bright yellow kitchen watching another man cook breakfast. Also a strange occurrence given the time, but neither man has much of a mind for propriety.

The man cooking breakfast has never gone to war. His eyesight is too bad and he has epilepsy to boot. The government hadn’t wanted him, and he is more than fine with that. (Later, he would be distraught he couldn’t serve his country, torn apart by guilt at his in-action, but he hasn’t been told that yet.) He is making omelets because they are his favorite and the man sitting on the kitchen stool needs more healthy food. They can’t survive off chocolate, coffee, and cigarettes no matter how much they both may want to. (Later, this would translate to the dissention that plagued their house, the reason so many terrible things happened, but it’s not bothering anyone now.)

Upstairs, another man is sleeping in the master bedroom. He’s exhausted after a full night of working, but he will get up in a while to come to breakfast so he can see everyone else, and then he will go back to bed for tonight’s shift. (Later, he is the man the husband was cheating on his wife with. He is the reason the house is haunted. But he doesn’t know about all of that, and he’s pretty content where he is.) There is another man sitting at the desk in the master bedroom, writing quickly with minimal light glinting off his glasses so as not to wake his companion before he must. This man doesn’t really feel like a man, and while transgender was a word whispered only in gay bars and around campfires, that doesn’t really fit either. In fact, he doesn’t have the language to describe what he is, so for now he’s decided to stick with man. It is not unbearable. (Later, this gender dissonance will be the reason he was thrown out, the reason he was so alone. He’s never once felt alone, though.)

The last man in the house is smoking on the back porch, scratching absently at the eczema on his face. The flaky skin and heterochromia don’t really bother him anymore because he’s had years to come to terms with it. And in the army, it didn’t matter to anybody. They respected him once he proved himself, and nothing terrible ever came from it after that. (Later, the man’s face will be the reason people claim an inhuman creature descended on the house to bestow their untimely fates. Depending on who’s telling the story, though, he is the man the wife is cheating on her husband with.) He can smell the food cooking inside and he knows it will be done soon. He can’t wait to taste whatever his favorite cook has made this time.

“L?” the one is the skirt asks, eyes focused anywhere but the newspaper laying callously on the table. He hasn’t looked at one since he got sent home because the after-effects of the war and other forms of violence usually encompass the first page. He doesn’t like to be reminded of what he went through for a country that won’t let him exist. (Later, this is resentment and mental illness, rolled into one incurable ball of rage. It is not entirely wrong, though it is less rage than despair.)

“Yes?” the cooking one asks. (Later, the cook is the wife who cheats on her faithless husband. They will debate: can it be cheating if he did it first? There is no satisfactory answer.) In public, he would never accept being called anything but Mr. Abbott. He has the glasses and tie, the indisputable look of self-assured confidence on his face that keep anyone from questioning his decisions. It is a must in their society. (Later, he is called ‘stone-hearted bastard’ and ‘ice queen’, though many then thought the same of him. It is decidedly not true.) Here, he smiles at the other and sweeps the paper off the counter as he realizes his slip. He doesn’t want to hurt this man he loves so dearly with something so mindless.

“Should I go get the others…?” His question trails off like more words should follow. None are forthcoming, and the cook knows that his mind probably just stepped out for a moment. It’s unsettlingly common, but they haven’t found a way to help it yet.

“Yes, dear,” he says. “I think that would be best. The omelettes are almost done.” The once-soldier nods and heads up the stairs. He still walks with a kind of sharp precision he wishes he didn’t have; it is so different from the undisciplined kid he was when he left. He often wishes things hadn’t changed. More often he wouldn’t trade all his bad experiences that lead to this perfect present for the world. (Later, somehow, this is twisted into an unrecognizable shape, some malformed loathing for the people he lives with, the people who do not have those same awful memories. This has never been true. When he hears it, years down the line, he wants to score the walls with his anger at being so misremembered. He would not ask them to take these memories from him for anything.)

He knocks on the door to the master bedroom and sticks his head in. “Hello, sweetheart,” the one at the writing desk whispers.

“Hey, Patty,” he says back, watching the sliver of morning sun sparkle in his eyes. “L’s just about done with breakfast. You want to wake The Prince or should I?”

“I can get him,” Patty says, and he giggles quietly as a snore sounds across the room. “I’m sure Lo will need your help to fend off Dee, the fiend.” He slips out of the room and goes back to the kitchen. Sure enough, Dee is doing his best to steal food whenever their beloved cook has his back turned.

“If you must insist on nicking my food before it is all done,” L says, the hint of a smile playing around his lips, “the least you could do is have some manners and wash your hands first.” He thwaps the back of the man’s hands with his spatula, so the ex-soldier who served with the food thief crosses the room and wraps his arms around his waist. He’s about six inches taller than Dee, so it’s no challenge to pick him up and carry him across the room like a particularly rowdy sack of flour. (Later, this is aggressive, domineering behavior that strikes fear into anyone who witnesses it.)

“I thought L told you to stop grabbing food,” he mutters, nuzzling the other’s hair.

“He did,” agrees Dee. “But I am so incredibly starved, Virgil. I feel like we’re trying to live off rations again. I haven’t eaten a morsel in  _ hours _ .” Virgil blows a heavy breath onto the other’s head and he shrieks out a laugh, trying to get away.

“You’ll live, snake. You ought to let that last meal digest before you begin trying to inhale something new.” He sets Dee down on one stool and then climbs onto the other himself. They always eat at the table, their perfect little family, but Virgil likes when his feet can’t touch the ground. He likes scuffing the plain wooden bar with his shoes to leave something behind in this house that can’t be easily wiped away. (Later, those marks are said to be friends and family being thrown into the furniture in a blind rage. Nobody knows that yet. They won’t know it for a long, long time.)

“Morning, love,” says the newly-awoken man, wrapping warm arms around Dee. He smiles as the warmth settles into his cold skin and work away the chill.

“Hello, darling,” Dee responds. He wonders how many times you have to refer to someone with love until it becomes a part of their name. He knows he’ll do it as many times as he needs to find out, and he’ll do it many more after that. (Later, this is possession, this is greed, this is ownership. It is made to be something sharp and hard, not all like it is.) “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.” He kisses Dee’s head and leans against him.

“To the table, all of you,” Lo says, hands loaded with plates. “It is time for breakfast.”

“At precisely seven fifteen,” agrees Patty. “You’re always so punctual, Lolo.” He twines his fingers with Virgil’s and pulls him to the table. Logan sends around the plates and takes his own seat. Their table is simple, pretty wood, circular so that no one can sit at ‘the head of the table’. It seems an outdated ordeal, and there are five of them besides; none of them want to sit alone.

“Roman, you can’t have my coffee,” Patty says, pushing Roman’s hands back. “You’re going to sleep in an hour, the last thing you need is to be kept awake.” Roman grumbles in protest and collapses onto Patty’s shoulder. Virgil hooks his left ankle with Roman’s under the table, and he links his right arm with Logan’s. Dee holds Patty’s hand with the one that’s not holding his fork, and he kicks one leg up into Logan’s lap as he laughs at the defeated look on Roman’s face. 

“Darling,” Dee says, “could you pass me the chocolate syrup?”

“Are you going to put it on your omelette?” Logan asks.

“Of course not,” Dee says, affronted. Logan raises an eyebrow. “Fine, fine. Only a little bit. But I feel like deserve chocolate.”

“I second that,” Virgil says and slides the bottle across the table to him. It is only then that Logan realizes Virgil has already smothered his own food in chocolate. He takes a sip of coffee and smiles. Logan sighs through his nose.

“Thank you, lovely,” Dee says. He blows a kiss to Virgil and then drowns the egg and vegetables in a chocolate tsunami. Patty confiscates the bottle a few seconds in. Dee pouts, but Patty is and always has been the master of puppy eyes; he’s been granted immunity.

They eat the best they can, all linked together like a human chain, and it’s peaceful. It is peaceful and nice and loving and wonderful. The omelettes are delicious, the coffee is strong, and the contact is comforting. They are warm and happy and so, so safe.

Roman presses a kiss to Patty’s coffee-stained lips, then extracts himself from their gentle tangle and heads into the other room for a moment. The remaining four look at each other curiously, but they stay relaxed around the table, content to wait.

The first strains of Sam Cooke’s  [ _ You Send Me _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL-Z5Jrnc4I) float through the kitchen. Roman comes back in and takes Virgil’s hand, pulling him up. They begin to sway slowly back and forth as Sam Cooke croons softly in the background.

“ _ Darling, you send me _

_ I know you send me _

_ Darling, you send me _

_ Honest you do, honest you do _

_ Honest you do, whoa, _ ” Roman sings in Virgil’s ear. Logan reaches across their table and takes Patton’s hand, and their spouses are bathed in soft, golden sunlight. Dee rests his head against Logan’s shoulder, and it is a moment in perpetuum.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx  2019 xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Like most ghost stories, it is twisted and corrupted and tainted. There are many versions of events that never transpired, breathing life into something unreal. The real story is one of love, and happiness, and unashamed  _ living _ . The world may never know what truths it has lost, but the ghosts of the past will never forget what they have.

And if you look closely enough, watch the curtains just as the sun lights the sky, you may see the silhouette of two men swaying slowly to unheard music and three more sitting at the table, happy and in love.


End file.
